


Words in the Night

by EldritchMage



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Other, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29146908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EldritchMage/pseuds/EldritchMage
Summary: Kitchen noises at three a.m. lead to an unexpected conversation.
Comments: 37
Kudos: 16





	Words in the Night

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, all. It's been a long, hard year, and I'm gradually tiptoeing my way back into writing. This short story isn't part of the Tolkien fandom, but I tagged it as such in hopes that some of my regular readers would like to take a look. It's the tale of a tired human who tries to figure out why strange noises are emanating from the kitchen in the middle of the night. I hope you enjoy it.

I heard the noise again three days later. As before, it was three a.m. As before, I’d been in a deep sleep. But this time, I didn’t dismiss the noise as echoes of a dream. My dreams might be more vivid than most, but even they can’t produce noises that resonate in the waking world.

This noise was loud and raucous, like a plastic coffee cup bouncing across a tiled floor after a mischievous cat batted it off the kitchen counter.

I don’t have plastic coffee cups.

I don’t have a cat, either.

I fished my serrated paring knife from under my pillow. I’d cached it there the morning after I’d first heard the bouncing coffee cup, when I'd discovered my previously full peanut butter jar was now half empty. Given that the peanut butter jar has a tight screw top and resides in the fridge, my hungry invader wasn’t a mouse. Mice have surprisingly dexterous hands, but they aren’t big or strong enough to unscrew a peanut butter jar. What’s more, mice aren’t tall enough to open the fridge.

Ergo, my invader was bigger and stronger than a mouse, hence the knife under my pillow.

Okay... knife in one hand, heavy-duty steel flashlight in the other. What I couldn’t stab, I’d bash. Tiptoe, tiptoe down the hall, across the living room – watch that squeaky board by the chair – and into the kitchen, as silently as a wraith. Holding my breath, listening hard...

“Don’t move!” I snarled, thumbing on the flashlight, then hitting the light switch with my elbow, knife at the ready –

Nothing.

A big, fat nothing.

The kitchen was as pristine as I’d left it after supper. Everything was clean and put away.

No coffee cups on the floor.

No cats, either.

I opened the fridge, and eyed the peanut butter jar on the door.

The top was gone, and the jar was empty.

I slammed the fridge shut, put my back hard against it, and grabbed my knife. “All right, I know you’re in here. Come out, right this bloody minute!”

Nothing.

“I mean it. I’m not blind – I know an empty peanut butter jar when I see it. So come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Nothing.

“If you don’t come out, I’ll search this place from top to bottom and drag you out. When I find you, you’ll wish I’d called the police. This knife is wicked sharp, and I know how to use it.”

Still nothing.

“If you don’t come out, I’ll never buy peanut butter again, and then where will you be?”

Something rustled under the sink.

Flashlight blazing, I yanked open the cabinet door, fully expecting to see a mouse – rat? – cowering by the drainpipe. But that wasn’t what I found.

A small, dark shadow skittered behind the sink disposal.

Were those... legs?

Ulp – ankles didn’t bend _that_ way.

Neither did tentacles.

I scrabbled backwards, wielding my blazing flashlight like a light saber, as if its beam could hold off whatever was in the cabinet –

“Ouch,” whined a small, murky voice.

I pressed my back against the fridge. “Ouch?”

“Bloody ouch, if you want to know. That flashlight burns. Turn it off.”

I gaped – something under the sink the size of a football with spindly, weirdly jointed limbs – tentacles – both – was talking to me.

Was I was finally having a lucid dream? A dream where you know you’re dreaming?

I’d dreamt lucidly a few times, but badly – most times, as soon as I’d realize I was dreaming, I’d wake up. Since this scene didn’t flitter away, I did a little jump to confirm that gravity still worked. That’s what you do when you think you’re lucidly dreaming, because if you jump in the air and float, it likely means you’re dreaming, because physical laws don’t necessarily work when you dream.

I fell back to the cold kitchen floor with a thunk. Gravity still worked.

The kitchen clock read 3:10 a.m. no matter how hard I stared at it – that’s another check you can make, because in most dreams, even lucid ones, printed words and numbers don’t remain steady, but change right before your eyes, as from _cat_ to _bat_ to _bark_.

I was not dreaming.

“No way will I turn it off. As soon as I do, you’ll skitter off and I’ll have to listen to you throw plastic coffee cups across the kitchen again some other night. So hop out of there, tell me who and what you are, and why you raided the peanut butter.”

The little shadow shrank behind the sink disposal. “I don’t throw plastic coffee cups.”

“You threw something.”

“I dropped the jar lid.”

“Twice. Three days ago, and just now. So come out of there.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“There are rules.”

“Rules about what?”

“About letting you see me.”

“Whose rules?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“You eat a lot of peanut butter.”

A snort. “That’s your fault.”

I snorted back. “My fault? How is it my fault?”

“If you were a normal person, you’d leave dirty dishes in the sink and let stale taco chips collect under the fridge. Maybe even drop a few raisins or M&Ms under the table. But nooooooooooo, you have to be Little Miss Neatie Pie, so I have to forage for bare sustenance.”

I snickered. “ ‘Little Miss Neatie Pie.’ That’s good.”

“I didn’t mean it as a compliment.”

“Wouldn’t you hate it more if I were a slob? Scattering food detritus would attract roaches, and then you’d have competition. Or maybe roaches are the perfect appetizers for sneaky creatures who like to steal peanut butter.”

“That is low.”

“You’re the one lurking behind the sink disposal.”

“If you don’t want me to lurk behind the sink disposal, then turn off that bloody flashlight.”

“If I turn it off, you’ll skedaddle, and we’ll be right back where we were ten minutes ago. So talk. Name, rank, serial number, that sort of thing.”

“Cereal would be the perfect thing for you to scatter under the table. Why can’t you eat Froot Loops like a normal person?”

“Apparently I’m not a normal person – I’m a person with a something or other hiding behind my sink disposal. I don’t know anyone else in that situation.”

Another snort. “Shows how much you know.”

“Oh, do lots of people have a something or other hiding behind their sink disposals? What are you, anyway? It’s awkward calling you a something or other.”

A long, raspy sigh. “Would you _please_ turn off the flashlight? It really does hurt.”

“Politely asked. Do you promise not to bat off to wherever?”

“It’d be best for both of us if I did. Talking to a human isn’t part of the deal.”

“What deal?”

Silence.

“Look, you started this conversation, I assume for a reason. So if I turn off the flashlight, will you tell me what you want? Assuming that once I turn off the flashlight, you won’t turn into an ogre and try to eat me instead of peanut butter.”

A small, disgusted snort. “A bloody lawyer. Of all the humans there are, I got a bloody lawyer.”

“I’m not a lawyer. And what do you mean, you got me?”

My flashlight was getting heavy, and it wavered a bit. The little shadow cringed and muttered a pained curse.

“Sorry.” I shifted the beam of the flashlight up just a hair, not directly focused on the shadow, but still brightly illuminating the inside of the cabinet. “I’m not interested in hurting you, unless you want to hurt me, and if that’s the case, you’ll be sorry. So...”

“I’m just trying to scare up a meal here in your oh-so-pristine kitchen,” the shadow grumped.

“Okay, you’re hungry. That’s the only thing you’ve volunteered – nary an answer to any of my questions. Maybe we can come to an agreement. I give you food; you give me answers.”

The little shadow trembled. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Not peanut butter, maybe?”

“Chicken tikka masala with rice, maybe?” I coaxed.

“Oh, fucking hell,” the shadow said in a worshipfully greedy voice. “I’d sell my soul for that.”

“I don’t want to buy your soul, assuming you have one. Just answers. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“You swear?”

“A deal offered in good faith may not be inviolable to some humans, but it is to my kind. So if you keep your end of our bargain, then I have to keep mine.”

I kept my flashlight pointed into the cabinet as I groped in the fridge for the bin of leftover tikka, loosened the lid, and stuck it in the microwave to warm. When the timer dinged, I stuck a fork in the chicken, edged the bin into the cabinet, and retreated to put my back against the fridge again.

“The light? Please?”

I switched off the flashlight, but kept it in hand and both eyes on the disposal drain. But the little shadow didn’t move.

“And a little privacy? Things get wonky if I let you see me.”

I pushed the cabinet door halfway closed, just enough to see the corner of the tikka bin. An absolutely gluttonous moan welled up from the depths of my cabinet, followed by rattles of the tikka bin and a lot of delirious nom-nom-nom noises. I had just time to get comfortable on the floor before my eldritch visitor sent the empty bin clattering out of the cabinet.

“Feel better?”

A burp worthy of a sumo wrestler bounced off the kitchen walls, drawing my laughter.

“It was nice of you to warm it up and provide a fork.”

“Glad to do it. So keep your side of the bargain. Who are you?”

“Um... I’ve been with you for a long time. Your whole life, actually.”

“What, you got assigned to me at birth?”

“More or less.”

“More or less?”

“It’s complicated – astral planes and so forth. Professional secrets. I can’t get into them, no matter the bargain.”

I hummed. “Fair enough. Can you tell me _what_ you are? You’re not just a football-sized shadow under my sink disposal.”

“Size isn’t material. I can be as big as outdoors or as small as a mouse, whatever a situation calls for.”

“So you’re not corporeal, exactly,” I guessed.

“Hmmm, that’s a good way to think about it.”

“But you’re something that’s been with me for my whole life?”

“Yes.”

“Are you a figment of my imagination?”

“No... but I can cause figments of your imagination.”

I pounced on that like my guest had the tikka. “I’ll bet you caused me more figments when I was a child, didn’t you?”

A little chortle. “You’ve got an amazing imagination. It’s given me a lot to work with over the years.”

“Not so much now, I bet.”

A sulky sigh. “No. Which sucks.”

“You’re The Dark. The thing I was so scared of when I was little.”

A chagrined huff. “Damn. I thought it’d take you longer to sort it out.”

“Admitting you’re an astral being who likes to crank up my imagination made it pretty obvious.”

“I guess so,” The Dark agreed glumly. “Starving’s put me off my game.”

“And the reason you’re starving is because I haven’t given you much to work with lately.”

“Bloody right. This is all your fault.”

“Blame the person who taught me that The Dark isn’t nearly as terrifying as what can be in The Dark.”

Silence. Maybe it was my amazing imagination, but I sensed anger, resentment... and sympathy?

“I put a word in with the demons about him.”

“He cut into your game, I guess.”

“Harsh, seeing as how I helped push him over.”

“Did his Dark gobble up all the nastiness before you could?”

A disgusted rumble. “We’ve got standards, you know. He didn’t meet any of them.”

I considered. “Since he’s past bothering anyone on this plane again, I retract the cynicism. All help cheerfully accepted, astral or not.”

“Welcome.”

“So... why do you still hang with me, given that I’m not scared of you anymore? You could move on to more, um, fertile ground.”

“It doesn’t work like that. Once a Dark gets assigned, it’s permanent.”

I hummed. “I’m not sorry to lose my fear, but, I am sorry it didn’t turn out so well for you. How’d you get assigned to me, anyway? Did you choose me?”

“You were too hard to resist, so I didn’t. You had so much promise as a child. Your nightmares were spectacular – very tasty. You made it all the way down to the most primal level of universal terror, which not too many humans can say.”

“Quite the honor,” I smirked. “So you weren’t assigned at my birth, then, but only after I was old enough to have those spectacular nightmares you found so appealing.”

“That was the more or less I mentioned. I thought I’d be fat and happy for life.”

“My life, you mean. What’ll happen to you after that?”

“I’ll go around again, just as you will. Oh, damn – I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

“No worries. I already figured that out, so you didn’t reveal any of your professional secrets.”

“I should’ve realized that you’d be attuned to more than primal terror.”

“Meaning?”

A snort. “The other end of the spectrum, duh! You’ve got so many happy airy-fairy house spirits roosting in this place that there’s hardly room for me. You draw them like rotten meat draws flies.”

“That’s picturesque.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know. Your bloody houseplants never die – it’s a jungle in here, not that the outside vicinity is any better. The shrubs grow, the flowers are lush, the birds sing, the animals frolic like they’re moonstruck. Even the slugs are well behaved and stay off the hostas. All as glowy and green as a fairy tale – it’s sickening. As for that gargoyle in the den –”

My eyebrows went up. “That gargoyle” was a concrete garden statue I’d rescued from a secondhand shop. I’d originally thought to put him in the garden, but he’d seemed more the literary type, so I’d perched him in the den beside the bookcase.

“‘That gargoyle’ is Lord Tarsigel, Defender of the Library. I’m quite fond of him.”

“He puts on airs. And he’s surly. And – and all those pesky, meditating Buddhas! Did you have to put one in every room?”

“Maybe they’re too quiet for you.”

“They chant in unison when you’re not here. And that Lord Shiva whirls around like a dervish, trailing flames until I want to pull his hair. But they’re not the loudest of the lot. Those two giggly plush toadstools in the bedroom are the worst. So fucking gleeful.”

I didn’t resist a smile. “They make me laugh.”

“They hurt my ears.”

“Do you break out in a rash or something if I’m happy?”

“As good as,” sulked my guest.

“I’d be sad if my happy state of mind gave you a rash.”

A disbelieving snort. “After all the fear I sucked out of you over the years, I imagine you'd love to return the favor.”

“Since you’ve been with me from childhood, then I assume you were paying attention during the four years when he was here. Even my nightmares paled in comparison.”

“Are you calling my nightmares petty?”

“Not at all. Once I got a few years under my belt, those nightmares gave me great stories to write. So maybe the child was terrified, but the adult, such that I am, appreciates the irony of turning those nightmares into stories that give other people the creeps.”

“Ew. Not only did I get the Little Miss Neatie Pie of lawyers, I got a Pollyanna who turns lemons into lemonade, too.”

“I work with what I’ve got,” I grinned. “So are you going to tell me why you started this conversation now, or do you want to keep bantering? Not that I don’t enjoy the banter, but this floor is cold.”

“Go get a robe. I’ll wait.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

I grabbed warmer clothes and hurried back to the kitchen, fully expecting the hallucination to be over, the peanut butter jar to be full, and the tikka to be back in the fridge – another promise broken. But the cabinet door remained ajar, and the empty tikka bin remained on the floor.

“Still here?”

“Of course I am. Promised, and all that.”

I eased back down on the floor. “Okay, thanks.”

“I didn’t really mean to start this conversation. It’s just that your flashlight was so bright. It caught me off guard.”

“Understood,” I agreed. “But since you did, what’s on your mind? Maybe you prefer creamy peanut butter to chunky?”

“Chunky’s fine, but it gets old.”

“I can see how it’d get monotonous. What else do you eat, besides bits of dropped food?”

“That tikka was the bomb.”

I laughed. “Thanks. But when I was having those nightmares, I bet you weren’t eating peanut butter or tikka. You sucked down my night terrors, yes?”

“Hell, yes. I’ve never felt better.”

“So pickings must be pretty slim these days if you’re reduced to raiding my fridge.”

The Dark’s sniff was supposed to sound snotty, but it mostly sounded tired.

“Does every human get a Dark assigned to them?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Wow, such suspicion.”

“Our bargain was about you and me, not the whole history of human-Dark symbiosis.”

“We didn’t specifically limit it. So humor me. Does every human get a Dark?”

“Most do,” The Dark admitted.

“Who doesn’t get a Dark?”

“He didn’t, for one. Those standards I mentioned. It’s another complicated thing.”

“Okay. Can you tell me if the vast majority of humans get a Dark?”

A considered hum. “That’s more or less true.”

“The vast majority of humans aren’t afraid of The Dark. So not all Darks feed on fear.”

“That’s... more or less true, too,” The Dark conceded with reluctance.

“Are there different kinds of Darks, then? Or are all of you more or less the same?”

“Bloody hell, you keep prying and prying, don’t you?”

“You don’t have to go into detail. Yes or no, are you all more or less the same?”

“Since we’ve gotten this far in a conversation I should have never started, yes, we’re all more or less the same when we’re assigned to our human.”

“Aha! So if all Darks start out more or less the same, then they must adapt to their human over time. You chowed down on my primal terror nightmares, but other Darks subsist on other emotions.”

The ensuing grumble sounded wary, which made me chuckle.

“What’s so funny?”

“All this time, you’ve chowed down on emotional junk food. Even the physical foods you mentioned – Froot Loops, taco chips, M&Ms – they’re all junk. No wonder you’re cranky.”

Silence.

“It’s true.”

“You eat chocolate. I eat nightmares.”

“I don’t eat _only_ chocolate. I eat kale and chicken tikka masala and oatmeal a bunch of other stuff, too. Do you eat the astral equivalent of oatmeal?”

A retching sound rumbled from my kitchen cabinet.

“I hope you didn’t just spew chicken tikka masala inside my cabinet.”

“No.”

“Much appreciated. So I gather that astral veggies and fiber and such have no place in your diet.”

“Ugh.”

“Is there an escape clause in your rules that lets me release you to choose another human?”

“No escape clause.”

“Then we’re stuck with each other. If you’re not so smart, that means you’re doomed to a diet of no nightmares and monotonous peanut butter. But you sound pretty smart to me, so...”

I left the sentence dangling. It took a while, but eventually a nervous rustle whispered from the depths of the cabinet.

“So... what?”

“If you’re as smart as you sound, you’d change your diet.”

“Ooh, tikka!”

“Your emotional diet. Away from nightmares.”

“I _like_ nightmares.”

“No longer on the menu. So either you starve, or you learn to eat something else.”

Silence.

“Look, if you understand human-Dark symbiosis, you understand adaptation. What Darwin wrote about. There’s a copy of his book in the den.”

“As if your fancy-schmancy librarian would let me lay a finger on any of your books.”

“Try asking him nicely – and stop trying to deflect the conversation off point again. You don’t want to admit that you could change your diet from nightmares to something more nourishing. And I don’t mean tikka.”

A snarly little grumble.

“It’s a basic tenet of evolution – when something becomes a scarce resource, an organism either adapts, or dies. Nightmares have become a scarce resource, so either you find something else to eat, or you die.”

“I don’t die until you do.”

“Then either you find something else to eat, or you spend the rest of my life as a miserable, hungry, lonely, meager shadow cowering in the back of my sink cabinet.”

“You’re cruel.”

“If other Darks can do it, are you saying you can’t?”

“Now you’re patronizing.”

“You’re stubborn.”

A very long silence ensued. Now that I was warm and comfortable, I was getting sleepy, so it was time to push things along.

“Okay, since you won’t say it, I’ll say it for you. You want to know what’s in this for you?”

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

“That’s funny – an astral being talking about a mind.”

“Fucking hell – please stop with the metaphysics. That gives me a headache. You know what I meant.”

“I know what you meant.”

“All right, all right – what’s in this for me?”

“A cushier job. And better food.”

“Explain.”

“I didn’t like having terrifying nightmares, but I did get a lot of amazing stories out of them. You ate my nightmares, and I wrote amazing stories, so I’ll call us square to this point. Just because I’m not afraid of you anymore doesn’t mean either of us has to be miserable going forward. I meant it when I said I’d be sad if my happiness caused you unhappiness. After the last four years, I’m through with terror and turmoil – I’m determined to be as happy as I can from here out, and I don't want to make anyone miserable in the process. If you choose calmer emotions instead of nightmares, you’d have all my good stuff to feed on. I’d live in the light again, and you’d be that fat and happy Dark you wanted to be when you first chose me. Win-win.”

A thoughtful little shuffle whispered from the cabinet. “You’re very persuasive. But I’d be doing most of the work.”

“I did most of the work having the nightmares. I still have work to do to get past some of the past four years, too.”

“True.”

“My therapist says that everything’s hard at first, but gets easier the more you practice. The more I practice my exercises, the easier it is for me to be happy. The more you pursue a different diet, the more you’ll have to eat.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“It’s not all that easy yet, but I’m getting there.”

A noncommittal sniff.

“I’m willing to help you adjust.”

A long silence, then, “How?”

“Tikka once a week? Fettuccini Alfredo now and again? Guacamole?”

“You’d do that?”

“I like to cook. It’s easy to make extra. And I’ll put a cushy blanket in the back of the linen closet for you to use in the daytime.”

“Very thoughtful. But I still won’t be able to let you see me.”

“Of course. But I hope we can still talk.”

“Not if another human is here.”

“I’ve sworn off humans for the foreseeable future.”

“Maybe I could throw a few better figments into your imagination now and again... once I get used to the new diet.”

“New story ideas would be great. Um, about the toadstools? I’ll talk to them. Ask them to go easy on the shrieks and giggles.”

“That’s more than decent. Thanks.”

“Do you want to shake on it? I won’t look. I’ll just stick my hand inside the cabinet.”

“Okay.”

I edged my hand inside the cabinet, and shut my eyes for good measure, so I didn’t see what took my hand. It was small like the hand of a child, except bonier, and it felt cool and scaly and hairy and misty all at once, in a spidery kind of way.

“Thanks,” the little voice murmured back. “It was getting old, being hungry and alone all the time.”

“You’re welcome. It's good we could make things better for both of us."

"Me, too."

"I... guess I should go back to bed now. It’s nearly four.”

“Prime time for nightmares... er, sorry. For other dreams, too.”

I grinned. “Maybe salmon tomorrow?”

“That’d be great.”

“Okay. Um, sleep well, assuming you sleep.”

“Another complicated thing, but I appreciate the thought. Until later.”

“You, too.”

I got to my feet. The paring knife went back into the knife block, and I turned off the kitchen light to pad back to the bedroom. Halfway there, I pulled a spare fleece blanket off the linen closet shelf and laid it on the floor. Then I got back into bed...

And sat right up again.

I turned on the bedside lamp, and eyed the two small plush toadstools with black button eyes who sat beside the lamp.

“Um... about The Dark? Go easy on... it, I guess you’d say. Your giggling hurts its ears, so if you’d be a bit more... moderate? Thanks.”

Just after I turned off the lamp, I heard two high-pitched giggles, quickly smothered... right before a small, football-sized shape curled up on the end of the bed.

# # #


End file.
